Display panels such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are commonly used in appliances such as thermostats, watches, pagers, cellular telephones, video cameras, etc. to display information. Such devices are generally supported by a retainer housing, which sometimes orients the display panel at a particular angle within an appliance for increased visibility by the user. In a thermostat designed to mount to a wall surface, for example, a display retainer may be configured to orient the surface of the LCD panel in a slight upward direction to improve the viewing angle from above. A backlighting device including one or more light emitting diodes (LEDs) is typically mounted to a light guide plate that acts as an optical waveguide to illuminate the backside of the LCD panel. A diffusive pattern of ridges, grooves or dots on the light guide plate is often used to disperse the light rays in a relatively uniform manner across the backside of the LCD panel. The light guide plate and LCD panel are typically received and retained by a separate retainer housing.
The LEDs used to supply light to the backlighting device are typically secured into the light guide plate, and then manually connected to the circuit board. Connection of the LEDs to the circuit board is generally accomplished by either manually soldering the LED leads directly to the circuit board, or by hard-wiring the LED to the surface of the circuit board with the use of separate wire leads. Such techniques require the use of multiple parts that demand considerable precision to assemble, are labor intensive, and in some cases increase the cost of the device. Moreover, the use of manual soldering methods in comparison to more modern techniques used in the art require that additional steps be taken to ensure a clean contact between the various components. It is therefore advantageous to reduce the number of parts and assembly steps required to connect the display retainer and backlight to the display panel.